Technical Field
This invention relates to integrated circuits, and more particularly, to processors and floating point number units.
Description of the Related Art
Processors, or processor cores, are used in in a variety of applications ranging from desktop computers to cellular telephones. In some applications, multiple processors or processor cores, may be connected together so that computation tasks may be shared among the various processors. Whether used individually, or as part of group, processors make use of sequential logic circuits, internal memory, and the like, to execute program instructions and operate on input data, which may be represented in a binary numeral system.
One particular application in which processors or processor cores are used is database processing. Software instructions executed by a processor or processor core may allow for the analysis of large of amounts of data in a database, such as, e.g., financial data. Such databases may be stored in one or more storage devices included in a computing system, and may include numbers, such as, e.g., amounts of money or the like, as well as other related information. Different databases may store numbers in different formats dependent upon characteristics of a particular database.
In analyzing data included in a database, a processor or processor core may retrieve portions of the data from the database, format the retrieved data, and store the formatted data in memory of the computing system for additional processing. To facilitate such retrieval, formatting, and analysis, some processors or processor cores may employ coprocessors, or other dedicated hardware, to perform more complicated arithmetic operations, such as, floating-point multiplication for example. Such coprocessors may be fabricated on a separate integrated circuit chip, or may be included as a separate functional block within a processor. While the use of dedicated arithmetic hardware may result in improved computation performance in some database applications, the format of numbers being processed may be specific to a particular database. In such cases, additional program instructions may be required to allow different processor or processor core hardware configurations to operate on data included in a particular database.